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  • How To Start Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Campaigns & What Channels To Use

    How To Start Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Campaigns & What Channels To Use

    In the world of digital marketing, there are two conventional methods for driving new business to your company and website. Each has tradeoffs, but both are similar in their end result of working to increase a company’s lead volume and more revenue.

    1. SEO:
      • Methodical
      • Focused on long-term acquisition of market share in the digital marketplace
      • Results seen over long period of time, not immediately
      • Cost-conscious and affordable for most businesses at various levels
    2. PPC:
      • Aggressive
      • Short-term gain of clicks, impressions and leads
      • Results can be sustained, but realized very quickly
      • Expensive and sometimes cost prohibitive based on industry

    SEO is incredibly important to every company’s long-term success, and there are great ways in which SEO and PPC can work together to create even stronger results. But, this article is a focus on the proper strategies for building up PPC campaigns, how to structure them and when to use them most effectively.

    Types of PPC Channels

    While PPC might sound like one specific strategy, there’s a lot more that goes into the process of even picking which is the proper channel to engage in with paid ads. Even then, various channels and platforms offer different ways of delivering your ad to users across the web.

    The most popular channels that see significant PPC spending is the paid search and paid social media space. While we will address the positives as well as shortcomings of each further in this article, there are many options to consider. From Google to Microsoft or LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) and more, there are plenty of channels that could help promote your brand and drive more business.

    What Kinds of PPC Campaigns go on Which Channels?

    Each platform or channel offers many types of advertising. There are a few basics that dominate most of the ad spend with small, medium and large businesses and are the most popular across business scale and industry.

    1. Paid Search Ads

    These are most common on search engines, think Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising. Paid Search Ads essentially overpower the traditional search results on a Google search result page (SERP) and push your ads that look just like normal, organic search results. Advertisers pay by the click of each of these, but automatically have a “bid” of how much they are willing to pay for a click for the ad to appear. Higher budgets usually lead to more appearances of the ads, leading to more clicks and more conversions. High competition can drive prices up, but finding the right keywords can make this type of advertising very fruitful for any business. It’s no wonder why this is by far the most common form of digital advertising today.

    2. Social Media Sponsored Ads

    These ads showcase your business in various ways on social media feeds. These are often made to look like a normal post from a friend or business, but only it’s sponsored and with the proper demographic targeting data, can get a product or service in front of the right eyes. This type of advertising is functional for very specific types of businesses, like e-commerce or companies with content/services that have particular virality. Most businesses, even if they think they might, don’t have this very rare asset, and find social media advertising most beneficial for Remarketing.

    3. Shopping Ads

    Shopping ads are specifically for e-commerce businesses that offer products for sale directly online from their website. With the proper setup, these ads can help drive users to your products without knowing what your business is, but knows they need a product you sell. These ads can help drive new, untapped business without the user even needing to get to your website to purchase.

    4. Display Ads

    This form of advertising is much more visual and requires more setup work than Paid Search Ads, for example. Display ads often involve some well-produced video content or image assets that help portray your business through visual media, like YouTube or other video streaming. A lot like Discovery Ads on social media platforms, you’re giving your business an identity and a chance to explain what you are trying to sell, with the intention of a user being captivated in the short time they have to convert.

    5. Email Display Ads

    Not to be confused with Email Marketing with list building and expansive campaigns, Email Display Advertising is somewhat of a hybrid between various forms already mentioned. It combines the emphasis on text content like Paid Search Ads, but shows up in a more passive sense like Social Media Ads. These ads appear in users inboxes, like Gmail inboxes, with a small “ad” tag to differentiate between real, spam and advertising mail. Google charges by the click to open the message. This form of advertising can be used best with specific demographic and audience attributes tailored to who might be the most interested in your product or service.

    6. Local Services Ads

    One of the newest forms of advertising on Google, these ads put Paid Search Ads to shame with their heightened importance and prevalence on a SERP. These ads appear in the same place as normal Paid Search Ads, but often bump those traditional ads down and showcase at the very top of the page. These ads are available for specific industries that are common enough for search results to generate a Local Services (or often seen as Google Guaranteed) section. This section provides a green checkmark, large info about a business, even an image of the logo or primary contact at the business.

    This type of ad requires much more vetting on the backend from Google with verification and identification, but the benefit is that Google gives your ads prime real-estate on the SERP to gather leads. Budgeting is separate from traditional Google Ads, but can be set at any limit, and you are charged per phone call to your business through the ads. In the backend, there are options to see call duration, topic, and at times even a transcript of the initial call to your business.

    7. Discovery Ads

    This type of advertising is in the same type of virality-necessary type of ad. Showcased in various social media platforms explore pages, this type of ad capitalizes on trending activity and the potential for a completely uninterested person finding your products or services and becoming interested within a timeframe to convert with your business.

    What Are Some Downsides to These Types Of PPC Ads?

    There are a number of downsides, inefficiencies and items to consider about each type of advertising to make sure it would make the best sense for your business to be spending its hard-earned money. It only makes sense to run ads if it makes a difference for your business and helps improve your bottom line, increasing leads and traffic.

    The biggest thing to consider about your business is its recognizability in the marketplace. Are you an established brand with a good reputation in your community beyond just your clients? If so, you have the blessing of being able to be more adventurous in your ads. With brand viability, you can engage in email and display advertising, as well as social media advertising. Those can be difficult for companies to use when starting out as a new business or one with little name recognition, meaning the place to start is almost always Paid Search Ads.

    While display ads use the continued emergence of video across the web, the best chance to convert is with clips of well-produced video. A lot of businesses either 1) don’t have video ready to use or 2) don’t have the content or capacity to create such videos. It can be a losing effort to push hard for the video content when it has a more difficult chance of converting users to new leads.

    The Social Media Ads Asterisk*

    Social media ads are controversial. Many businesses think of this type of advertising first, but without certain brand recognition, conversion rates are untenable. Given the passive nature of social media, getting someone to click on your ad who wasn’t particularly looking for what your business can provide is a monumental task, and one that has proven time and time again that it doesn’t work for a majority of businesses.

    One aspect where it can provide some value on the offensive, is more awareness with a Retargeting campaign through social media ads.

    Retargeting campaigns take a tracking pixel associated with users who already visited your site at some point, and finds ways to show them ads for your business, keeping your company at top of mind for someone who has interest in your services or products and is more likely to convert. Your digital marketing partner will be able to set these ads up in short order and bring some value to social media ads.

    PPC Ads In A Nutshell

    It’s a major commitment for any business to make the leap and start running digital advertisements. It’s important business leaders have the right information, strategies and team in place to implement any ads that are aiming to drive more leads and revenue.

    Paid Search Ads are a great place to start, and these can be easily set up with little background information and the help of a digital marketing. When venturing into the more advanced forms of advertising, it’s important to realistically understand where your business is in the marketplace from a reputation, awareness and competitive standpoint.

    If you’re ready to jump in to PPC advertising, contact our expert team at DigitalParc to help you get started right away.

  • Digital Marketing + SEO Trends For 2024

    Digital Marketing + SEO Trends For 2024

    As 2024 is underway, DigitalParc has been hard at work formulating new plans and strategies for all of our clients’ success into the new year. Analyzing Google trends, site design standards and more is always the matter of focus around the turn of the new year. Being on the cutting edge of these developments ensures we serve our clients and maintain their competitive edge on their industries.

    What are some of the top Digital Marketing trends to look out for in 2024 and beyond? Read more below to see what your business needs to be focusing on to stay atop the rankings and generate more leads this year.

    Helpful Content Revolution

    For the past few years, Google has been pushing updates to its search ranking algorithm to be better at recognizing content that is actually helpful for users, rather than filler content that historically was good for SEO but not great for real people to find what they need. This old practice is sometimes referred to as keyword stuffing which worked back when Google’s algorithm was much simpler. Now, the game has gotten tougher to rank with those simpler practices. Google’s algorithm has really grown up before our eyes and frankly become more human-like. It has become very good at identifying content on websites that will be helpful to real users looking for goods, services or information on the web.

    For hard-working and dedicated business owners, this is a good thing. As this emphasis on helpful content continues, businesses that are legitimately good at what they do will be rewarded — as long as they can properly showcase what they do. That’s where a digital marketing firm like DigitalParc comes in to manage your presence online, both on-site and off-site, helping you get more leads to do what you do best: serve your clients.

    Helpful content at its most fundamental level refers to the idea of providing the most clear and concise description of what your business does for its clients. The basics of:

    • What you do.
    • Where you conduct business.
    • What sets you apart from competitors.
    • What tips and insights you can offer that will help users decide to do business with you or learn more about the industry.

    Frequent Site Updates

    It doesn’t matter what size your business is, where you’re located or what industry you are in, updating your site frequently is a must. This isn’t a completely new development in SEO, but the emphasis has never been greater with the amount of competition plus the more deliberate nature of Google indexing crawls being less frequent.

    With Google reducing the frequency of crawls to index pages on websites, frequent site updates can help give additional signals to Google that your site is one worthy of being indexed. With robust content that is up-to-date, Google’s view of your website as a current and authoritative voice in your niche will be beneficial for organic rankings leading to new business.

     

    Local Rankings Have Never Been More Important

    Depending on the scope of your business, local rankings will have a different weight to them. If your business specializes in selling goods or services within a defined local area, local pack rankings are something you absolutely need to focus on in 2024, if you aren’t already. Google reviews have a significant impact on giving the map-style results at the top of SERPs (search engine result pages). Given the value Google puts on these rankings vaulting ahead of organic rankings, it’s imperative for businesses to find a place in these results.

    The statistics don’t lie, either, as 44% of local searchers clicked the local pack results, compared to 29% of the organic results and 19% for paid ads. Sites listed in the top-3 local pack results receive 126% more traffic than businesses in the organic results below.

    If your business provides local goods or services, it’s imperative to start driving Google reviews, presenting an updated Google Business Profile listing and showing up on the map.

    Site Update Designs

    As 2024 rolls around, that means there’s more hackers and bad actors across the world cracking their knuckles and rolling up their sleeves to wreak havoc on good websites to promote their own, shadier sites and businesses. We’ve noted an uptick in spam and hacking attempts, which often prey on vulnerable website plugins and outdated site infrastructure.

    A fresh website build can help mitigate these problems drastically. With a new website, not only do you get the support of updated and secure infrastructure, but you get an updated design and the latest user experience (UX). Both Google and real people take site design very seriously. If load times are slow for a website, which older ones nearly always have problems with, Google cannot properly crawl a site, or will devalue it in rankings for being a waste of time for users. Twofold, if a user gets to a site that is slow, hard to navigate and looks untrustworthy for being outdated, it can push someone to look elsewhere for the goods or services your business provides.

    Conclusion

    Another new year with new expectations and new trends for the world of digital marketing. This may seem like a lot to focus on, but it’s important that your digital marketing be taken seriously. The digital marketplace is more crowded than ever, with businesses vying for supremacy in all industries and realizing that there are plenty of opportunities to gain new customers thanks to organic searches, paid ads and more. Make sure your business can not only keep up in 2024, but have your best year yet by getting ahead of the trends.

    DigitalParc can help you get ahead of the curve, as we do for our numerous clients who have trusted us with their digital marketing efforts for the past 15 years. Reach out to us today to see how we can take your business to the next level and drive more leads.

  • August 2023 Google Algorithm Broad Core Update: What To Know

    August 2023 Google Algorithm Broad Core Update: What To Know

    Google is making changes again, and it’s time to announce another significant “Broad Core” update.

    As you may know, Google makes subtle updates to its search algorithm multiple times per day every single day of the year, but from time to time it releases much more impactful and significant broad core updates. On August 22, Google released such an update, the second broad core update of 2023.

    Early Fast Facts:

    While SEO professionals are still learning about the update and what it has in store for websites a few days into its rollout, here’s what we know now:

    • It began on August 22, 2023.
    • It will take roughly two weeks to roll out completely.
    • It is affecting all types of content on the web.
    • It is intended to reward well-designed and properly optimized websites with valuable content.

    While this update doesn’t come with a specific focus for improving the search experience, it will have the ability to create volatility — both positive and negative — surrounding website keyword rankings. Since this larger update is intended to fundamentally improve the entire Google Search experience, there will likely be fluctuations in each website’s search performance. To be clear, pages that experience prolonged drops in ranking are NOT being penalized, rather sites that weren’t taken fully into account since the last broad core update are now being recognized. In short, if your pages lose ranking, it may not be because anything is wrong, but more a reshuffling of helpful content across the web.

    How DigitalParc Can Help

    DigitalParc has experienced every Broad Core update Google has thrown our clients way since 2010 and taken each website we work with to heart to improve dropped rankings, stabilize volatile ones and maintain great rankings. As this core update begins to make an impact for every website regardless of industry across the web, our team is continually learning more and evaluating ways to pivot for sites that were negatively affected.

    Your company needs digital marketing partners that are on top of the ever-changing landscape of the internet. Driving new traffic, new leads and eventually new customers is our top focus, to bring real results to your business. Contact DigitalParc to get an SEO evaluation and help your business stay well positioned through the next Google Algorithm Updates.

  • Importance of Good Backlinks & Removing Bad Ones

    Importance of Good Backlinks & Removing Bad Ones

    What is the importance of auditing backlinks to your website?

    Backlinks have always been a very important aspect for SEO (search engine optimization) of a website. These can either be present on your site, or feature your site on other domains. Both are good to have, while linking to other high-authority domains can help your search engine profile in the eyes of the search algorithms. Being links on other sites can help establish further domain authority while also generating valuable traffic from a previously untapped well of web users.

    Though this all sounds like an innocent and even encouraging sign of cooperation between companies and websites, this is still the internet and there are always actors with bad intentions ready to enact some shady tactics in their web strategy.

    It’s important to audit your backlink profile or work with an experienced SEO company that can keep tabs on your backlinks to ensure your site isn’t being negatively affected by any shady, black-hat backlink practices.

    Backlink Scans 

    Auditing or scanning through your backlink profile sounds daunting or almost impossible for a single person to do. You don’t know where sites are linking to your business, a backlink mentioning your business could be anywhere. Thankfully, various SEO tracking tools like Ahrefs, Moz and SEMRush have backlink audit tools that can scour the web to find links to your website.

    These tools even evaluate the type of backlink and takes contextual data of the anchor text, the domain authority of the linking site and more. When using these sites and tools, it ends up as a great way to keep track and file each of these backlinks. One of the most important indicators that these tools provide, though, is a toxicity score.

    Toxicity Score

    On SEMRush, for instance, the backlink audit presents each non-whitelisted backlink in order of toxicity score, which is the likelihood that the link is problematic for a variety of reasons. Those could be a low domain authority for the linking site, questionable content or other factors. Higher toxicity scores reflect worse quality websites.

    Shady SEO companies can work with businesses to drive more toxic backlinks to their competitors and drive their site authority and rankings down, thereby elevating their own business. DigitalParc and other reputable, white-hat SEO companies that follow best-practice when optimizing websites don’t engage in sabotage of competitors.

    Anything with a 60 or higher is a toxic link that should be removed immediately, potentially toxic links with scores between 40 and 59 can be reviewed, but are often backlinks that your site won’t want to have.

    Removal and Disavowal

    So, how do you get these other sites to remove your company’s website in order to keep its good standing with search engines and high domain authority?

    There are a few options, including reaching out to the owners of the infracting website to remove the link to your website. While this is a straightforward solution, it rarely works, as often toxic websites don’t have the hierarchy of ownership to respond, or are even controlled by bots aimed at farming links.

    The simplest and most effective solution is link disavowal and removal. This can be a difficult process for those not in tune with every integrated product helping their SEO, but DigitalParc’s SEO strategists routinely go through this process with our clients. The process begins with moving the toxic links to a disavow list. Then, you will need to import any existing disavowed link list from Google Search Console to your SEO tracking tool. Then, take the compiled list of new and old disavowed links and upload again to Google’s Disavow Tool.

    That will signal to Google that your website disputes the presence of a link to your site on the provided domains. Essentially, you’re telling Google that you don’t approve of your website being linked on a particular domain, so it won’t factor that domain in evaluating SERP (search engine results page) rankings or domain authority scores.

    Conclusion

    Backlinks are a complicated mess when there are various bad actors at play. Monitoring these regularly can become a chore and a headache when there are disavowals in the picture. DigitalParc works with backlinks every day and ensures our clients aren’t dropping in ranking or domain authority due to toxic backlinks. Contact our SEO team today to get started with your backlink audit and get on a path to a healthy website with more traffic.

  • Why Minneapolis is a Great Place to Start a Business

    Why Minneapolis is a Great Place to Start a Business

    Minneapolis is a great place to start a business for a number of reasons. First, the city is home to a number of large businesses, which provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to get their start by working with these companies. Additionally, the downtown area is very developed and busy, making it a prime location for businesses to get started. Finally, the city has been increasing its suburban areas in order to accommodate the growing population, which provides even more opportunities for businesses to thrive. Overall, Minneapolis is an ideal location for entrepreneurs looking to get their start in the business world.

     

    Here are some more specific reasons why Minneapolis is a great place to start a business:

     

    • There are major companies headquartered in the city, providing opportunities for entrepreneurs to get their start by working with these businesses.
    • The downtown area is very developed and busy, making it a prime location for businesses to get started.
    • The city has been increasing its suburban areas in order to accommodate the growing population, which provides even more opportunities for businesses to thrive.
    • Minneapolis is home to a number of resources and programs that are designed to help businesses succeed, such as the Small Business Administration and the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce.

    The Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in the city, and it provides a number of resources and programs to help businesses succeed.

    Minneapolis is home to a number of colleges and universities, which provide a talent pool of potential employees for businesses.

    Overall, Minneapolis is an ideal location for entrepreneurs looking to get their start in the business world. With a large number of major businesses headquartered in the city, a busy downtown area, and increasing suburban areas, Minneapolis provides numerous opportunities for businesses to succeed. Additionally, the city offers a number of resources and programs designed to help businesses succeed, making it an even more attractive option for entrepreneurs.

    About Minneapolis

    Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota, the 46th largest city in the United States, and home to a number of large businesses, including Target, Best Buy, and General Mills. The downtown area is very developed and busy, with a number of skyscrapers and office buildings. The city has a population of over 400,000 people and is located in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, which has a population of over 3 million people.

    The city of Minneapolis has a long history of business and entrepreneurship. The first permanent settlers in the city were two businessmen, Francis Dousman and Charles Hoag, who established a trading post in 1819. Since then, the city has been known for its thriving business community. In recent years, Minneapolis has been ranked as one of the best cities in the United States for business and careers by Forbes magazine.

    Minneapolis has a strong economy, diverse population, and abundance of resources and programs that are designed to help businesses succeed. If you’re thinking about starting a business in Minneapolis, be sure to take advantage of all that the city has to offer!

    In conclusion, Minneapolis is a great place to start a business for a variety of reasons. If you are looking for an opportunity to get your start in the business world, this city should definitely be at the top of your list.

  • PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Trends To Use Heading In To 2023

    PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Trends To Use Heading In To 2023

    If your business is focusing on using pay-per-click ads to supplement your incoming leads and new customers, you certainly understand what a competitive space the digital marketplace is today. With a crowded organic space, paid ads can be just the ticket to help elevate your company higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) to attract new business.

    Google’s search engine has major algorithm updates and changes all the time, with five or six core updates each year and more minor ones every day. But what about the trends within pay-per-click ads? What methods will work well for the upcoming year to help maximize your ad spend dollars and result in more efficient leads and loyal customers? Read below for some trends you can employ in your PPC campaigns for cost-effective, productive ads.

    Smart Bidding

    Smart bidding has become incredibly efficient in recent years. If your paid ads campaign isn’t employing a strategy that involves smart bidding, it could be falling behind your competitors.

    Bidding strategies have evolved past just maximizing clicks to generate leads. As Google’s AI has evolved, it is much better at predicting user behavior from search history of users and those who have already interacted with your business and those in similar industries. Smart bidding strategies such as Maximizing Conversions with Target CPAs or setting a Target ROAS (return on ad spend) can help Google best spend your budget. These are key to maximizing efficiency and reducing budget wasted on clicks that are less likely to proceed through the sales funnel into a worthwhile lead or customer for your business.

    Understanding Value Of Leads 

    The best trends sometimes can be the tried-and-true ones. That is absolutely evident in businesses understanding some of the basics of their leads and customer base. Google’s AI is continually getting better at understanding more context around searches on its platform. The Google Ads interface has also been making it easier to enter contextual data about your business so it can learn best where to serve ads.

    If your business has a major sales performance management software, there’s a chance it could be integrated with Google Ads to import anonymous data points that can help the system learn more about your core customer base, and therefore serve good ads to people that are most likely to convert.

    Additionally, take advantage of the various inputs like conversion value to give signals to Google on what type of leads are the best for your business. Assign dollar values to phone calls, form submissions or other types of conversions to show which bids and conversions to prioritize more than others. Are mobile users more valuable than those on desktop? That prioritization is customizable, too, so your business is using its ad spend more efficiently.

    Try New Ad Types

    If your business has engaged in Google Ads in recent years, you likely did most of your advertising via Expanded Text Search Ads. One of the most notable items of 2022 is that Google phased out that type of ad and stopped allowing those to run in June. This basic type of ad is best left in the past, though, as Google has developed much broader and effective ad types to choose from.

    The most common replacement for Expanded Text Ads is the Responsive Search Ad. RSAs offer more headline and description options and allow for more programmability for location and service to more keywords.

    To diversify your ad serving and capture a higher market share, consider adding different types of ads and compliment your existing targets. Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are incredibly valuable in that they capture targeting related to your web content and searches that the account administrator may have missed. While your attempt is to be as thorough as possible, often search habits change faster than the data can tell you to manually adjust it. DSAs help make up that gap in your ad serving on the search network. Display Ads are important for serving on website ad space, videos and other articles online. This can help capture users on sites related to your business and videos about services or products you offer, different than search ads where there is some more initiative from the end-user to see the ad in the first place. Local Search Ads are relatively new to the Google Ads realm, helping serve ads specifically to local service searches that show up in maps and in Google’s new “screened” ads section for certain industries.

    In Summary

    Google’s Ads platform is evolving as fast as many other parts of the web, so it’s important to keep up on what can make a difference for your business for the better and rise above the competition. DigitalParc’s PPC experts are ready to manage your ads campaigns and help your business thrive. Our experienced pay-per-click team has more than 10 years of working with Google Ads, as well as other online ad portals, so we have the background to effectively give your ads the best shot of succeeding with users. We have also been recognized by Expertise.com among the Best Pay-Per-Click Agencies in Minneapolis in 2022.

    Contact DigitalParc today at 612-845-5590 or fill out our form for your digital advertising needs!